


what's in a name?

by cosmicaeronaut



Category: Hitman (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Life Imitates Art - Freeform, except it's really just hurt, one-shot that I ALSO wrote in a tent, tryna get back in the game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 00:56:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19074223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicaeronaut/pseuds/cosmicaeronaut
Summary: 47 gets inquisitive. Lucas (reluctantly) opens up. Some brotherly bonding before another duo mission.





	what's in a name?

**Author's Note:**

> My friend and I got a bee in our bonnets while camping and dueled to see who could write some good quality Hitman fic. She won, but I got second place!

"Why did you choose Lucas?"

The question came out of a dead silence, rustling the air in the tiny, two-man tent.

Words failed Lucas for the moment. "...6 isn't a name," is what he settled on. "Why haven't you chosen a name?"

He got a stunned silence in return. "You're avoiding my initial question."

Lucas sighed, almost fondly remembering 47's once incessant need to have a reason for everything. "There was… this elderly couple. They took me in a few months after the Institute burned. I knew that it wasn't safe, I remembered what had happened the last time, but the man of the house insisted."

* * *

_ "I won't take no for an answer, boy," the man said. He had holstered his shotgun, having caught 6 in the act of stealing milk from the goats in the barn. "It's freezing out here. We have a guest room and food inside." _

_ 6 stared at him from his perch behind the trough, shivering and terrified—for even the ideal soldier has his breaking point—then stood and followed. _

* * *

"He was a kind man. Gruff. He and his wife were foreigners to Denmark, British Nationals in their retirement. They took me into their little cottage on the cliffs of Skagen for several months."

* * *

_ "You know how to hold a gun, don't you?" the man asked him, not as a question but in resignation. _

_ 6 nodded wordlessly, bundled up and standing next to the man as he cleaned his shotgun. _

_ "Right, of course. Then you can help me hunt the quail." He placed the gun in 6's arms, the weight of it surprising him. _

_ 6's eyes widened. "Hunting birds?" _

_ The man nodded. "Mm. There's no deer in season right now. We'll need the quail, unless you want to go into town—" _

_ "No!" 6 exclaimed, jumping up from the ground. "No, I'll hunt quail." _

_ "Good." The man smiled, the lines around his eyes becoming bolder. "Let's get to it." _

* * *

"They were so kind. And never asked too many questions; I think they knew I had been through enough. They were determined to get away from it all and I was more than happy to help them with that."

Lucas shifted in his sleeping bag, watching his breath fog in front of him.

"And then our father found me again."

* * *

_ 6 woke up to smoke and ash in his lungs, inescapable heat flooding his skin. The window burst from the flames and outside he could see Institute soldiers gearing up. _

_ He wouldn't be caught. He was  _ **_not_ ** _ going back. _

_ The things they had given him were not abandoned, as smart as it would have been to just run. 6 threw his belongings into a knapsack and grabbed his quail gun, kept clean and loaded for this nightmare scenario. _

_ As he came out into the main room of the cottage, the walls ablaze and crumbling, a voice wailed from their bedroom. _

_ "Boy! Boy, the door's jammed!" The man cried out. The door handle rattled in place, glowing orange and warping with each attempt to turn. Outside, he heard the familiar hum of the Institute jeeps, and knew immediately what had happened. _

_ 6 weighed his options as the cottage burned around him. _

* * *

"I knew that they… they were going to die, no matter what happened next. Either the fire would get them or the Institute's men would shoot them down as they razed the village." Lucas swallowed, focusing on the peak of the tent in order to force back the tears that silently rolled down his face. "But I was tired of making selfish decisions. That was how I lost you."

* * *

_ Their bedroom door came off easily under 6's engineered power. The man met him in the doorway, his wife coughing under his arm. _

_ "It's me they want," 6 said, as softly as he could through the roar of the flames. "You go out the back, I'll hold them off." _

_ The weight of the shotgun was lifted from his hands as the man shook his head. "No, son. You're young, we're not. Go on, get out of here." _

* * *

47 spoke for the first time since prodding him for information—not a question, but affirmation. "His name was Lucas."

Lucas hummed. "Lucas and Marissa Grey, from Devon. He got a few of them before they took him down; Mr. Grey fought in the trenches during World War II. And Marissa… she was already fragile from the factories, and the smoke would have gotten her anyway."

"It's… not your fault," 47 said, but he sounded unconvinced of his own platitudes.

"It was. It's alright, I've made my peace with it," he said, wiping the tears from the scruff of his beard. His breath was even again. "That's why I took his name. His son passed in a motor accident when he was much younger, there was no one to remember them. Now there is."

"I see," 47 replied flatly. There was a hint of depth to it—as if he understood on some level, but not in the same way.

That was fine, Lucas figured. 47 didn't need to understand; perhaps it was better if he didn't.

He turned over in his sleeping bag and let the silence overcome them.


End file.
